Developmental Differences in Visual and Auditory Processing of Complex Sentences

Abstract

Children aged 8 through 11 ( N ϭ 250) were given a word-by-word sentence task in both the visual and auditory modes. The sentences included an object relative clause, a subject relative clause, or a conjoined verb phrase. Each sentence was followed by a true-false question, testing the subject of either the first or second verb. Participants were also given two memory span measures: digit span and reading span. High digit span children slowed down more at the transition from the main to the relative clause than did the low digit span children. The findings suggest the presence of a U-shaped learning pattern for on-line processing of restrictive relative clauses. Off-line accuracy scores showed different patterns for good comprehenders and poor comprehenders. Poor comprehenders answered the second verb questions at levels that were consistently below chance. Their answers were based on an incorrect local attachment strategy that treated the second noun as the subject of the second verb. For example, they often answered yes to the question "The girl chases the policeman" after the object relative sentence "The boy that the girl sees chases the policeman." Interestingly, low memory span poor comprehenders used the local attachment strategy less consistently than high memory span poor comprehenders, and all poor comprehenders used this strategy less consistently for harder than for easier sentences.

On the capacity of attention: Its estimation and its role in working memory and cognitive aptitudes

“…There is now a considerable variety of studies in which relationships between different types of WM procedures and intellectual aptitudes, and their development, have been assessed (e.g., Ashcraft & Kirk, 2001;Booth, MacWhinney, & Harasaki, 2000;Caplan & Waters, 1999;Conway et al, 2002;Cowan et al, 2003;Daneman & Hannon, 2001;Daneman & Merikle, 1996;Engle et al, 1999;Fry & Hale, 1996;Gathercole & Pickering, 2000;Haarman, Davelaar, & Usher, 2003;Hedden & Park, 2003;Hitch et al, 2001;Hutton & Towse, 2001;Kyllonen & Christal, 1990;Lustig et al, 2001;Miyake, Friedman, Rettinger, Shah, & Hegarty, 2001;Oberauer et al, 2002;Salthouse, 1996;Swanson, 1996). Yet, there is not much agreement in the field as to the definition of WM, the best measures to examine it, or why these measures work (e.g., see the differences of opinion within the chapters of Miyake & Shah, 1999).…”

The development of sentence-interpretation strategies in monolingual German-learning children with and without specific language impairment

“…25. Booth et al (2000) have shown that there are good correlations for short-term memory tests (digit span and reading span) and the comprehension of complex sentences in schoolchildren. With regard to children with SLI, the type of information may play a role as well: a recent study based on ERPs has found that the processing of acoustic information was more strenuous for them than the processing of visual information; cf.…”

The role of working memory and contextual constraints in children's processing of relative clauses

“…Individual differences in working memory span have also been found to influence attachment preferences in syntactic ambiguity resolution in adults (e.g., MacDonald, Mendelsohn & Pearlmutter, 1999;Swets et al, 2007) and relative clauses in adults (Traxler et al, 2005) and children (Booth, MacWhinney & Harasaki, 2000;Felser et al, 2003). Furthermore, several explanations of sentence complexity effects observed in adults rely at least in part upon some form of memory load account (e.g., Gibson, 1998;Gordon et al, 2001).…”

“…Comprehension performance for right-branching subject-relative structures (like those used by Hamburger & Crain, 1982) was compared with performance on embedded structures with the same focus (see examples below figure 1). This study made use of an auditory comprehension task, similar to tasks used by Felser et al (2003) and Booth et al (2000) enabling us to examine the representation of each clause, and observe the effect (if any) of contextual information on comprehension. This type of comprehension task has been used previously, in conjunction with measures of online processing (Booth et al, 2000;Felser et al, 2003) but was used as a purely offline measure in the present study.…”

“…This study made use of an auditory comprehension task, similar to tasks used by Felser et al (2003) and Booth et al (2000) enabling us to examine the representation of each clause, and observe the effect (if any) of contextual information on comprehension. This type of comprehension task has been used previously, in conjunction with measures of online processing (Booth et al, 2000;Felser et al, 2003) but was used as a purely offline measure in the present study. Importantly, this task allows us to ascertain whether context influences comprehension even when this information is not essential in meeting the task demands.…”